Sherman cites Garoppolo as major influence to join 49ers

It was a tale of two seasons for the San Francisco 49ers in 2017 and Richard Sherman took that into account when considering his new club.

The 49ers were dreadful for the vast majority of the year, going 1-10 and appeared destined for another long offseason. After acquiring Jimmy Garoppolo in October, the 49ers eventually turned the offense over to him and won their final five games.

Sherman revealed Garoppolo's outstanding 2017 campaign was a major reason why he agreed to join the 49ers.

"That had a huge part of it," Sherman said, via ESPN's Nick Wagoner. "The way he played down the stretch was inspiring, it was incredible. It was poised. Sometimes you can get hot, a quarterback can get hot and then the next year fall off the face of the earth and you never hear from them again. What I saw from him was consistency. I saw poise. I saw leadership. I saw respect of his teammates, I saw command of the offense and he'd only been there a few weeks."

Sherman also raved about the camaraderie between Garoppolo and head coach Kyle Shanahan as another enticing factor, along with a defense that mimics Seattle’s Cover 3 base scheme.

"I think that Kyle is one of the most innovative and creative offensive minds in football," Sherman said. "He and (Rams coach) Sean McVay, and I told him such. That's from playing against him and seeing his schemes, and that's when he was in Washington, when he was in Atlanta and also in San Fran, he's always coming up with two or three concepts that we've never seen and we really had no answer for outside of some real bastardizations of our defense. And that's on the field, spur of the moment, having three or four All-Pro players who can adjust on the fly that way.

"But outside of that, some of the concepts were tough to stop. I think that he and Jimmy together will contribute a lot of wins for this football team. And I think defensively I can bring a presence and a leadership that will stabilize and help this defense rise to prominence as well."